Putting a car you have built into a garage is admitting defeat, and I`m sad to say, thats where I was at.

Down the road from me is a very good father and son VW garage, Len, the Dad looks after the watercooled stuff and his son Adam, is an absolute Aircooled fanatic. So I asked if he would take a look at the car and see what he thought. He reckoned that as so much had been apart recently that most of the settings would have been way out. Probably needed a good setting up, to which I agreed.

The day was a glorious hot sunny day, and the buggy stood outside in the sunshine waiting for its turn in the garage, and when it did - I got the first of many calls from Adam.

"Dave, your carb is soaking wet with fuel - Think you may have a fuel issue?"

I explained the issues I had last year with the pressurised fuel tank, and they had not shown their head in the last 6 months or so. I hadn`t figured that it had also been too cold for the fuel to warm up, and now it was getting warmer, the fuel was expanding at an alarming rate. Adam phoned back in quite a humerous mood:

"Dave, I think you had better come and see this"

When I turned up, he was there grinning like a cheshire cat and said that the pressure in my fuel lines was too much, and was overpowering the float valve in the carb. He disconnected the fuel lines at the carb and we watched in amazement as the jet of fuel shot nearly 10 feet across the workshop. We agreed that it probably wasn`t supposed to do that. However, we were at a loss as to why it was happening, as I did have a breather valve on the tank, and the facet fuel pump was supposed to be regulated to around 4psi - then we remembered that it wasn`t actually running - this was natural pressure, not from a fuel pump. We came up with a quick fix though, and that was to put a fuel regulator in line on a temporary basis, until I could take the bonnet off and locate the problem. I left him to finish off setting it up, and then had another phone call, and this time, he was in hysterics:

"Dave, its about the oil change I am doing . . . . "

" . . . . Oil Change ?" I replied

"Yes, I have an oil question for you . . . ." He laughed

" . . . Uh? . . . What about? . . . Which oil I use? . . ." I replied, unsure why he was playing with the oil.

"No, I was just wondering if you wanted me to discard the oil, or to put it straight back into the fuel tank? - It`ll probably run on it quite well, about 99 RON I reckon"

Turns out, the pressure in my fuel lines had been pushing the carb float valve open for so long, that the petrol had run down the sides of the venturi`s and had filled the engine up with oil. I have never seen oil with so much petrol in it in my life. Overfuelling like this would certainly account for some of the rough running.

Adam promptly set up the carb, the timing, changed the oil, and handed me back the car. I went for a few belts around the block and all felt good. I was however, still quite hesitant about its current state of reliability though, as the trip to Swanage 2012 was tomorrow - I was cutting it quite fine to say the least.

So that evening, it was a beautifull summers evening, and Lisa and I thought we would drive down the coast to Brixham, for an evening wander around the harbour and an ice cream, and put a few miles on the Buggy.

Off we drove, the Buggy was burbling away like it used to, no problems with accelerating, I could get up to speed, and Lisa and I parked up in the car park looking forward to driving to Swanage tomorrow for the carnival. We sat on the harbour in the evening sun and ate ice cream. Things were good.

Can you guess what happened when we got back in the car?

I jumped in the car and pressed the starter button, to be met with the most horriffic graunching of metal against metal noises, echoing off every building in the bay of Brixham, that was the final death throws of the starter motor. And then it siezed solid. Not even a click.

Luckily for us, the Buggy bump started failrly easily, and we drove home gingerly, hoping that we would not have to stop anywhere or stall the engine. Lisa didn`t say a word to me all the way home as I think she could tell from the steam coming out of my ears that I wasn`t in a particularly talkative mood. We packed the Subaru for Swanage in silence. There was no way on this planet that we were going to miss Swanage.

We knew from previous years, that Swanage Carnival weekend is pretty much the ultimate Beach Buggy event, we would be with like minded people, and knew that for anyone turning up without a Buggy, that there would always be some spare seats available for the cruise (Thanks Dom & Gary).

I`m actually quite glad I didn`t take the Buggy in the end. You see, I built my Buggy "Pre-Forum" and before I had seen most of the others on here, and because of that, I had built into it a thousand and one little niggles and mistakes. Some of the things I had done, could have been done better, and I spent that weekend making mental notes and bending peoples ears about who, where, why and how they had done the things they had done to their cars and decided that it was time to take mine off the road, dismantle it to sort out the fuel tank problems, maybe change the engine over for the 1600 I had now inherited and generally give it a bit of a rebuild.

I had a plan. 

First up on the list was that troublesome starter motor.

I tried searching for a genuine Bosch one, and the piece of junk that GSF were trying to palm off onto me as a genuine part beggars belief. I must admit, I am getting very weary of the crap and lies that seem to be coming from that chain, to the point that I am no longer going to use them at all.

Although I couldn`t find a genuine one, Heritage came up trumps with a USA starter, (I suspect shipped from China) but although slightly smaller in the body, seemed to have loads of grunt and turns the engine over at a significantly faster speed. Worked out to be much cheaper too.



and I knew that if changing the starter motor, then the small bush that goes on the end should also be changed at the same time, as it had adopted the obligatory oval shape - I am always surprised that this bush doesnt come with the starter and has to be ordered seperately.

Top tip - or should that be Top tap?

That little bush can be a tight fit in the bellhousing, but comes out in a matter of seconds if you run a tap through it and wind it out

With the bonnet off and tank out, it was time to take a good look at everything under there and see what I could do better. I gave everything a quick coat of blue hammerite, but to be honest, it had actually weathered quite well under there.

One of the things I wanted to do was to relocate the brake master cylinder reservoir. I had a remote bottle mounted on the inside bulkhead with the two long pipes going down to the master cylinder, just like the standard Beetle one. For some strange reason, I had it in my head that this would be a complex thing to convert and move, but the solution I found could really not have been more simple.

The fluid pipes were pulled, and temporarily joined together so that I didn`t get any dust or particle ingress whilst working, and I set about ordering up a replacement dual circuit reservoir from Heritage (about £20)



There are a couple of different sizes, and whilst not terribly well described by the guy on the phone, it turns out that it relates to the size of the plastic pipe coming out of the master cylinder. If you pull off the hoses, there are two white, angled plastic mouldings with either a 7mm or 12mm diameter to them - order accordingly. Fitting the repacement reservoir is nothing more than pulling out the two plastic adaptors from their rubber mountings on the cylinder and press fitting the replacement reservoir back into place. As a bonus, because this is on the reservoir side, air has not entered the system, and you should be able to get away without the need to bleed the system afterwards.



I had to grind away a little bit of the body just behind the reservoir, but I think thats because my body is a little more out of shape and probably overhangs in all the wrong places. The old holes were all re-glassed and tidied up.

A good tip I got from the guys on the muddy side, was to wrap a tie wrap around the outside of the cylinder and reservoir, as although nobody reckoned it ever would part company, it seemed a sensible idea just in case.

One of the niggles I wanted to be rid of was my dash mounted horn push. As you can see, my switchgear is from a Ford Escort XR4i that has been welded onto a VW steering column. I fabricated a bracket and mounted the front plate from the VW indicator gear that has the brass strip that contacts with the ring at the base of the steering wheel, and that way I could now wire up the horn to the steering wheel centre.



The gap between the diameter of the base of the larger Ford wheel, and the smaller Mountney one I was using was taken up by bending and attatching a draught excluder in a circle.

Next I tarted up the steering wheel. The black housing was polished up a bit, and I replaced the tacky plastic horn push with a billet aluminium one I bought on the net.



Big improvement I think. 

I currently had a pair of Porsche 944 seats fitted, that needed a bit of tlc. They are quite a wide seat, and do not fit many Buggies. The problem I had though was not the width of the seat base, but the width of the top section when it folded forwards - It kept catching on the sides of the shell.



Still, Porsche seats are very sought after because they are so comfy, so I thought I would sell them on and find something more suitable. Sitting in Hunters Buggy was a very quick way of choosing a new seat, the Suzuki Cappuccino seats he had were really comfortable, trouble was though, that they are quite rare and can command a high price for good condition ones.

However, a bit of thinking outside of the box, and I managed to pick up a pair of ripped ones for 99p each and £12 courier collection. A bargain indeed, and I was ecstatic.



Now you may think that what I ended up with for under £15 is somewhat rough, but after a quick session at Westcountry trimmers, and another £120 later, I am now the proud owner of these refurbished seats.



And as you can see, they are considerably narrower than the old Porsche seats that they have replaced.

Loving this read.

Really must scan and post up my Doon story, right from the begining

Chad

There are as many arguments for and against electric fuel pumps, as there are pumps themselves. But once the mechanical pump brigade finally conceed that you cannot immobilise the original fuel pump, then a meaningfull discussion can then be had about electric pumps. Generally speaking, the ones that will interest us will fall into two main types, the Facet "knocker" pump or the Rotary pump.

Due to the fuel problems I had previously encountered, I decided to start again. The knocker pump that had been bolted to the side of my fan housing was discarded in favour of a front mounted rotary pump. Most of the pipework and fittings I had were for 8mm fuel lines, which is great, except that the little elbow coming out of the bottom of the fuel tank is half that size. An adaptor was called for, and came in the guise of a plastic filter with a stepped shoulder on it. Perfect, and would double up as a pre-filter for the pump. A short length of 4mm pipe from the tank to the filter and then 8mm braided hose was run throughout the length of the car to the back, where I would deal with that end another day.



I used Aero fittings throughout, and having never used them before, the jury is still out until I see how many leaks evolve. Seemed simple enough to put together, although the anodising does mark very easily with metal spanners. Lots of advice was forthcoming about heatshrink or tape over the spanner jaws to protect the finish, but I`d done most of it by then.



The whole assembly was bolted together using rubber coated "Mikalor" P-Clips and then mounted to the floorpan on a rubber anti vibration bobbin.

My washer bottle was located in the footwell, and although Lisa has short legs and had never actually kicked it, every time I looked over, it did seem a really crap place to have put it. There was plenty of space on the other side of the bulkhead for it to go, so all I needed to do was relocate the bottle.

After seeing a thread by Ben_W about some stainless work that had been done for him by a really nice guy called John Cole, I had a look on his ebay page and came across an oil tank he had made for a motorbike. After some scribbles and dimensions were exchanged along with a few sheckles, this arrived in the post.



With it now mounted against the bulkhead, I can now refill the bottle from the wheel arch, and the sight glass is easy to see. The feed pipe from the bottom connects to a universal pump that I have under the dash area.



Of course, the minute I posted my new bottle pictures, the replies started to flood in, that washer fluid was also available in green. What is it with you guys and green? The only way to shut everybody up was to therefore empty the bottle, open every cannister in Halfords until I found the colour of screenwash I was looking for (much to the bemusement of the staff) and refill the bottle with green.



Honestly . . . The things I have to do to keep you lot happy   

It could do with being a shade or two darker, or you couls re-spray the buggy to a ligher shade of green

It could do with being a shade or two darker,:D

Ah . . . No . . . You see . . .

When I purchased this stuff and commented on the lighter colour, the salesman asked me what sort of Buggy I had, so I described yours and gave him your name. The salesman said, "thats ok sir, by the time the Buggy gets on the road, this will have bio-degraded and gone a few shades darker by then, and should match"



   

   
It'll be me that's biodegraded by the time I get on the road

Now it was time to investigate the source of my problematic fuel supply - the petrol tank - and I made a couple of very alarming and disturbing discoveries

The first discovery I made was the expensive little Demon Tweeks breather valve I had fitted when I put a new tank in there a couple of years ago, as suspected, had indeed failed, but only in one direction. For those that don`t know, you need to put a valve on the tank somewhere so that air is replaced as fuel is used up, else you get a vaccuum in the system and poor fuel delivery. However, if you only use a one way valve, then as the fuel vapours heat up, the tank can start to store pressure. Apart from not doing the car much good, it can be a little dangerous in the event of an accident, as petrol would squirt everywhere. Hence you need a breather valve, one that works in both directions.

As it was an exceptionally hot and sunny day, and me being somewhat inquisitive, I rigged up a spare mechnical oil pressure gauge I had to the fuel line pipe at the bottom of the tank, and left it to bake in the sun whilst out of the car (reckon it was about half full ) After three hours, the tank was obviously very hot, but I was alittle alarmed to see nearly 20psi on the gauge. Now I know this is no way an accurate test, but thats still a considerable pressure that has built up.  A breather valve would have vented this to the atmosphere long before any pressure had built.

The second discovery I made was when draining out the tank, and this one I was really not happy about. I bought a new tank from Flatlands a few years ago, great tank, and they suggested to go for some of their tank sealant inside. Seemed resonable, and the two part mix was very easy to apply by swirling it around the insides of the brand new tank, and left to harden. Looking through the fller hole over the years has made me think everything was ok. However, having removed the float sender to have a really good look inside the tank, I was annoyed to find that this protective layer is now coming away from the metal in big sections. Its breaking up into lumps, both large and small, and for want of a better description, I would say it has bio-degraded, or reacted with the petrol. Trouble is, I now have a thousand and one small bits trying to escape through my fuel lines. How many of you have ever looked closely at this sealant stuff a few years later and now wish you hadn`t bothered with it?

I`m glad I fitted a fuel pump pre-filter now, and it has made me think that I ought to go for a much larger and better fuel filter at the back as well.

Whilst investigating various breather valves, I was instantly struck by the sheer simplicity of the washer jet valve that Peter and Sally use on their cars - it was so simple. However, I did not want the "Scaramanga" or "Third Nipple" look, but my search led me towards off road motorcycle valves that go on top of the fuel cap. These were very simple end caps that allowed air to breath in both directions, but also had a small ball bearing inside that would shut off the fuel in the event of the bike going over, or in my case, should the Buggy overturn.



A length of Petrol resistant hose, long enough and high enough to make sure that the fuel didn`t slosh about under heavy cornering or braking, was run up the side of the A-post, and held in place with a Mikalor clip, just inside the dash area. Whilst running the pipe, I also thought it an idea to have a small "U-Bend" that would eventually fill with fuel and prevent continuous and open venting.